- Hi everyone.
In today's video,
I'm going to be giving advice
to a question submitted by a viewer around
how to support someone who is in the midst of psychosis.
(lighthearted music)
Hi everyone, and welcome back
to the Living Well with Schizophrenia channel.
My name is Lauren and I make videos about what it's like
to live with schizoaffective disorder or schizophrenia.
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All right.
So this is our latest video in our series around
answering people's questions or situations
and providing advice on them.
Just a quick reminder
that I am not a working mental health professional,
and so, just take my advice with a grain of salt.
I am coming at this from a peer perspective
and offering advice based on my own personal experiences.
All right, so, reading what was submitted to us,
"I was wondering if you have any advice
"on how one should interact with a loved one
"who is in the midst of a psychotic episode?"
I think that that's something
that kind of a lot of people struggle with
is how to properly help someone
who may be in the midst of a really challenging period,
such as a psychotic episode.
So I know something that has been really helpful for me
is kind of diverting my attention
from the delusion that I'm experiencing
or the hallucinations,
or whatever positive symptoms are happening
as a result of the psychotic episode,
diverting my attention from that
and more focusing on how I'm feeling in that moment.
So if you are supporting someone
who's in the midst of psychosis,
acknowledging what they're experiencing.
So if they are having a hard time with the sky being purple
or something like that, being like,
"Okay, I hear that the sky is purple.
"That is not how I personally am experiencing it,
"but I get how that might be alarming or scary for you.
"Do you wanna talk more about how you're feeling?"
You know, validating their experience
because what they're experiencing is very real to them,
but kinda moving on past that and saying,
"Well, let's talk about the emotions that it's bringing up"
or "Let's talk about how you're feeling in response to that"
and then moving on towards, "Well, how can we keep going?
"How can we move forward?
"How can we keep going with our day or our life
"with that still being the case?"
And kind of helping them to move through it in that regard.
I think another personal experience
that I'd like to bring up is
the last time I was in a really intense psychotic episode.
I was very fearful of everyone around me
because that was part of my delusion
and I was getting wrapped up in paranoia about everyone,
and I was very mistrusting of the people who were around me
and were trying to support me and whatnot,
and so, I think building rapport
and building a sense of trust
between the person who's in the psychotic episode
is very, very important
before you can really do anything else.
So an example was, I was just terrified
and cowering in a closet,
just fearful of everyone around me.
There was two police officers in my house
and what one of the police officers did
was got down on my level
and started just having a conversation with me,
trying to build some kind of rapport.
And then she started saying,
"Hey, you came to speak to my recruit class
"and I really, really appreciated what you were doing."
And she just kind of kept driving the point home
that she was a safe person.
She kept trying to build that sense of trust
between her and I,
and letting me know that I could trust her
with this very vulnerable state that I was in,
and I could trust her to support me through that.
And so I think that that is a critical step
in terms of supporting someone
who is in the midst of a psychotic episode.
And I think another thing that I wanna touch on is that,
even if this is a loved one
and you already have an existing trust
built up between you two,
it may not be the case
in the midst of the psychotic episode,
and so you kind of need to work on
building trust within that moment.
So that came up with Rob and I,
where I think Rob was a little bit taken aback
at the fact that I wasn't trusting him
while I was in the psychotic episode
and that I was questioning his motives
and his involvement in what was going on,
and so, understanding that
someone's reality is shifted
when they're in the middle of a psychotic episode.
And so, even if you have a strong sense of trust
on a regular basis when they're at their baseline,
that may not be the case
when they're struggling deeply with psychosis,
and so understanding that you need to work on
establishing trust and rapport in that moment.
And then of course,
once you've built up trust and rapport,
it's easier to kind of
work on what I was talking about before
in terms of addressing the feelings
and then working on how to move forward
with all that being the case.
And then once you've kind of talked about feelings
and moving forward and whatnot,
there may be room to then discuss
how best to manage the psychotic episode,
whether that's using medication,
whether that's going and speaking with your doctor
about changing medication, or different types of therapies,
or whether that's figuring out how to cope in other ways.
Once you're through the crisis point
and things are feeling a little bit more stable,
that's when you can then talk about
how to manage the psychosis.
Or if it's feeling like it's not going to be easy
to manage on your own,
then talking about potentially going to the hospital
to gain further care and support.
All right.
So I hope this little advice segment was helpful.
If you'd like to see more videos like this,
make sure to subscribe to our channel.
And again, if you would like to help support
the creation of these videos,
make sure to check out our Patreon page.
Thank you so much again for watching and as always,
wishing you and your loved ones good health.
We'll see you in the next video, bye.